Syracuse (4-7, 2-5 Atlantic Coast) will play Boston College (6-5, 3-4) in the Carrier Dome on Saturday with a chance to earn its fifth win. Five wins, sometimes, can be enough to get a team to a bowl game. For SU, it certainly won’t.

Here’s why:

There are 128 teams in the FBS and 78 available slots in 39 bowl games. For the first time in four years, it appears enough of those slots will be filled by teams that have met the standard requirement of six wins and a .500 record needed to earn a bowl bid. Seventy teams have met that threshold already, including eight from the ACC.

That leaves eight spots still available, with 18 teams boasting five wins heading into the weekend. There are four head-to-head matchups between those 18 teams, meaning at least four more have to emerge with a sixth win, bringing the total to a minimum of 74 bowl-eligible teams. And that’s just the minimum — more can and likely will win to make five-win teams irrelevant.

But let’s say the minimum happens and we only have 74 teams automatically eligible. Five-win teams would be considered next — a group SU can join by beating BC on Saturday. These teams would be selected in order of their Academic Progress Rating, or APR, a metric the NCAA defines as such:

• Each student-athlete receiving athletically related financial aid earns one point for staying in school and one point for being academically eligible.
• A team’s total points are divided by points possible and then multiplied by 1,000 to equal the team’s Academic Progress Rate.
• In addition to a team’s current-year APR, its rolling four-year APR is also used to determine accountability.

Here’s where SU’s hopes sink: of the five-win teams already sitting above SU, 11 have a better APR than SU’s 968. So unless some of them decline bowl invitations — a rare decision that also turns down both a financial and recruiting boost — SU will be watching bowl games from its collective couch for the fourth straight year.